Low Latency in Containerized Environments: A Performance Analysis with DPDK and Kubernetes

Low latency applications are highly sensitive to the overhead introduced by virtualization and container orchestration. This paper evaluates the combined effects of Kubernetes and DPDK on a Layer 2 packet reflector, implemented in both Python and DPDK.Across six deployment scenarios - including bare-metal and containerized setups with and without Multus CNI - we measure the impact on latency and jitter. Results show that Kubernetes introduces significant overhead, while DPDK reduces latency by up to 70% and jitter by 55%, restoring near-native performance even in containerized environments.Our findings demonstrate that DPDK, when paired with direct NIC access through Multus, is an effective solution for deploying real-time services in modern cloud-native infrastructures.